Open Beta Channels for Testing Patches

Good points; some issues not related to hardware just need some additional love and care to resolve. I didn’t know of budget cuts and downsizing, so that doesn’t help, if true :wink:

Cuts/downsizes shouldn’t happen so quickly after game-release in any instance, if it can be avoided, otherwise that does feel a little disingenuous to paying customers… since we want/need support to fix main issues found with the game pre- and post-launch… and quality-of-life type of issues uncovered.

I feel that way for any game, really.

But businesses are in business to make money, and if there aren’t enough sales to justify much post-launch support, that sucks and is sometimes a reality to deal with. Money doesn’t come out of thin air, unfortunately. In the case of the DEs, I would think Microsoft knew going into it that it was probably mainly for ‘the love of the franchise’ type of thing – or a long-term investment – rather than a short term return on investment thing. So if there are already cuts and downsizing that weren’t part of the original plan, then that’d be a bummer. If they’ve shifted workforce over to AoE3:D or AoE4, that’d be a different story. Maybe they could split their time a bit more between the new games and the already-launched DEs.

All that said, I’m just going off of what you said in your post, Phoenix; and so am just rambling. I, personally, don’t know the situation.

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I wondered the same thing. I thought that Spirit of the Law must have made a mistake.

I mean, the whole point of + 5 carry is so you don’t have to travel as often to drop off food, right? But Khmer drops food off INSTANTLY … so how can +5 carry be better?

Then it dawned on me. It’s because the +5 carry applies to the farmer walking around on the farm BEFORE it drops it off, as well.

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Hi everyone,

Last week i had a discussion with a friend of mine about updates.
Most of the times new updates bring new bugs which have to be fixed in the next patch or a hotfix.
Is there an option where a dedicated group of players test the new update for bugs before it is getting published?
Get players with different hardware for a good spread group of testing.
This might help catch obvious bugs and work them out before the update releases.

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all bugs will never get cought befor relese

Tbh the malay bug should have been quite easy to spot. Especially knowing that they had to test the Malay civ since they fixed the way upgrades affect Harbours.

It will result in more bugs getting cought before release. More testing result in less unknown bugs at release.

yeah, ok? 11 i know im not against it

It seems like every other patch introduces some game-breaking bugs. We’ve had among others

It seems like all of these should be very obvious from just playing a couple games. Why not at least have a public beta like with HD Edition (!), all of these would be found within hours

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Easy way to steal farms! I like it :rofl:

You should leave unfinished farm near your castle, so that when enemy gains LOS of it, then their villagers are lured into fire of your castle.

Hello (hopefully) someone from the dev team,

I have a complaint about the way updates are done.
Given the fact that i have no life and play way to much age of empires 2DE i have a pretty good look on these things at this point.
It seems that an update has about a 40% chance of making the game worse or about a 20% chance of making it broken to a degree it is almost unplayable.

There seems to be a lack of game testing done before an update is pushed.
I can assure you that i speak for a large part of the community when i say that what we want most of all is a smooth working game.
So all you have to do is play a 4x4 teamgame on laptops/pcs of different (but proper) quality of hardware and connection and play it out to the late game.
If it laggs like crazy like it is doing currently, delay the update! Idk if it is pressure from above or something but it makes 0 sense to me to push something this fundementally broken.

So my question to you guys is this:
Is there a test team, and what do they do exactly?

Ps: This is not the only issue btw i found after ~3hours of playing, stuff a test team should definitely find.

Gr.
D3rp

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They should make an open beta for every major update. I think one week would aready be enough to find most of the bugs or at least the game breaking ones.

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Yeah something like that could be really good

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Idk about above, but people here were super demanding about the November update’s release

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Such big issues like the horrible game performance - starting in mid Imp latest in TGs - does not need an open beta imo.

If the dev team played exactly ONE 4v4 game up to Imperial Age, they would have known. Cause the lag happens in every single game - even on decent high spec PCs (Ryzen 7 3700x; 2070 Super; 32GB Ram).

I am also curious about the testing system - i understand if there are non figured balance-hiccups.
Also villager discodancing on berries/house edges could be missed if you dont play more than 10 games competitivly.

But things like major game (under)performance in every single TG and sometimes even in 1v1s is pretty much impossible to overlook with proper testing :confused:

This comment can be taken with a grain of salt, but its no rent - i really appreciate the work of the balance and dev team and i absolutely love, that you are constantly pushing our beloved game to higher states. So thank you very much, but please start doing proper testing in terms of game performance.

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Yeah you are right, such things shouldn’t even happen in open beta.

Sorry to ruin your hope: The devs dont really respons much.

People like to exaggerate. I think most updates are fine and really a step forward. I really love some of the QoL features in the recent patch.

Main issue in the recent patch is indeed the lag in late game in team games. The devs are already aware of this issue and working on a fix.

After they fix this issue, i think we can look back on a great patch. The only issue left is the new UI which is also slow. But that isnt is nothing compared to the lag.

3 hours doesnt sound that much to me…

Note: Dont understand me wrong. I really understand the frustration. I also have no answer on the questions: Why didnt the testing team spot this issue? Those questions are legit and i also hoped for a patch without those issues. I also wont be against some sort of beta. That can be useful.

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That’s not the case. So, developers deciding to gave community broken update, because “people here were super demanding about” new update that was meant to be released on games birthday anniversary ?

Why no one sees that developers from really long time serve unfinished products ?
Look at the Chinese DLC for Age of Mythology - it is unplayable. For start of the Age of Empires II HD. The Age of Empires I Definitive Edition was completly bare bones on release and now it is still a garbage. The Age of Empires II DE after a year still has stability problems for multiplayer matches ( late game 3v3 and 4v4 runs like Powerpoint presentation ). The AoE III DE is in so bad state that even Age III youtubers are moving back to original version.

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:sa:

I dont think i am exaggerating much tbh, a have been through at least several gamebreaking patches. I remember going through walls for example at one patch. I have seem performance go up and down several times.

That was my whole point.

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4v4s are now completely unplayable. Even before THIS patch they were essentially unplayable late game. It’s sad and disappointing that team game performance, one year later, remains so miserable. It is surely driving people away from the game and causing bad reviews, leading to worsened sales.

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